


Ye Shall Receive

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode fill, First Time, M/M, Prompt Fill, Season 4 Episode 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 20:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11928255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: Caleb laughs, and it’s a cold, unkind sound. “Send me out to sea, then. One bullet, that’s all I ask.”Set during S4 Ep8, before Caleb leaves.





	Ye Shall Receive

**Author's Note:**

> Started as a fill for this prompt:  
> "I have you shoved against the wall but now I can’t stop looking at your mouth"

Caleb would never hurt him. He knows that, like he knows his lungs will take in air, that his legs will carry him forward. And yet.

This new Caleb isn’t one he recognizes, angry and bitter and broken. He twitches in ways he never used to, and something feels unsettled and uneven about him. He’s always been straight ahead, knee deep in the mud and headfirst down the hill, but he wavers now, veers off and has to correct.

“Listen to me,” Ben hisses, pushing him back into the wall behind the general’s quarters. “I’m trying, all right? But if you run your mouth and talk yourself into a court-martial there’s nothing I can do.”

Caleb won’t look at him, eyes darting to the side and down, chewing on his lip in an unfamiliar way. Ben stares at it. It’s red and split and fuller than he remembered. He finds himself leaning in, pressing his hand into Caleb’s chest.

It happens simultaneously. Caleb hisses between his teeth and his eyes flinch shut, and Ben feels something warm and sticky beneath his fingers. He looks down to see blood seeping through the rough cloth of Caleb’s shirt, half-healed and half-scabbed wound’s forced open by the unkind fabric and Ben’s harsh touch. He yanks himself back, horrified.

Caleb still won’t look at him.

“Caleb,” he starts, but can’t think how to finish. He’s too angry to apologize, too frightened, but nothing but  _I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry_  rings inside his head.

“I’m waiting,” Caleb says dully. “For you to send me home.”

“What?”

“What more do I have to do? What more will it take for you to be rid of me? I’m a disease. I’m a shattered limb only good for amputating. Be the good officer. Banish me.”

Ben can’t speak. He doesn’t recognize this man.

“I can’t,” he starts, then stops to swallow. “You can’t go back. Setauket isn’t safe, and they know you— Christ, Caleb, you sign your own name.”

Caleb laughs, and it’s a cold, unkind sound. “Send me out to sea, then. One bullet, that’s all I ask.”

“Caleb—” His hands start shaking. He can’t stop them shaking.

“In Greenland,” Caleb continues, not looking at him. “When you outlive your usefulness, when you’re just a drain on resources, they send you out to sea in a boat with no paddle, one skin of water. Out into the cold. Mercy.”

“Don’t talk like this. Please, don’t talk—”

“Why not?” Caleb looks at him, finally, and it’s fire and ice and pure wildness. He yanks his shirt down, revealing the broken scabs and uneven stitches. “This is all I am now. I’m a piece of meat. Less than. I’m fucking table scraps. There’s nothing to me anymore.”

Ben acts on instinct, base and desperate, when he flings himself forward. He doesn’t touch the wounds, but holds the sides of Caleb’s face in both hands and kisses him with a fury that would frighten him if he had a moment to think about it. The sound Caleb makes is pained, frightened, lost, and Ben crowds in closer, pressing his forehead against his friend’s.

“You will survive this.” His voice is low and rough and foreign in his ears. “You will. You must.”

Caleb’s hands fit themselves around his waist and hold on tight and steady. Ben think perhaps that he might cry.

“You will stay beside me, where you belong, and you will survive this.”

Caleb doesn’t say anything. He pulls back and looks anywhere but at Ben.

“You shouldn’t do that. We can’t.”

“Come with me then.” Something reckless is taking over, channeled from the helpless feeling he gets when he thinks of those days that Caleb was gone from him, beyond his reach. He pulls Caleb by the sleeve and walks back to his tent, walking straight and true and not looking behind.

When the flaps are secured behind them he pulls Caleb in again by the hips, waiting for him to respond.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Caleb says, looking at the ground.

“Hey. Look at me, hey.”

He won’t.

“Why won’t you look at me?” Ben reaches out to touch his cheek, feather light.

Caleb shuts his eyes. “I’ll ruin you,” he whispers. “I can’t take you down with me.”

“No.” Ben leans in and brushes his lips over Caleb’s jaw, then his cheek, then the corner of his eye. “You won’t. There no ruination here.”

“God help me,” Caleb says, and it’s broken and gasping, punched out of him like a curse, and he’s grasping at the edge of Ben’s waistcoast. “God, God help me.”

When Ben kisses him this time, he responds, arms wrapping around him and fingers digging into his back.

“You deserve more,” Caleb says as Ben guides him back to the cot. “Something soft and beautiful.”

Ben sits up and tugs at his stained shirt, breathless and awestruck. “I have everything I want. You have to know that. You have to know I’ve loved you since—”

Caleb stops his mouth, groaning as Ben sinks down on top of him. 

“God help me,” he repeats as Ben licks down his neck. “God, God, God—”

 

When Ben wakes the next morning, he’s alone. He’s contented and relaxed in a way he hasn’t been for months, and he tries not to let Caleb’s absence put him on edge. Caleb has never been a late sleeper, and surely there are endless things to do, arrangements that can’t be put off until later. He gives himself a moment to stretch under the blankets, imagining what he might have had if Caleb had seen fit to wake up in his arms.

He doesn’t see Caleb in the mess line, nor in his usual tent. More trouble with Mary and her Tory spy takes up a good portion of the day, and when he makes the decision to resign as head of intelligence, he wishes to God that Caleb were here beside him, calling him a fool.

The next time he sees Caleb, he’s being ushered into the office Ben has been sharing with Hamilton.

“The time has come,” he says, too formal, “for me to resign my commission.”

The bottom drops out of Ben’s stomach. He can’t look at either of the other men, can hardly stay upright as his mind whirls.  _Idiot, idiot_ , he thinks, ears ringing.  _You always do this, you push too far, you push beyond anyone’s ability to stand, how dare you think he’d stay._

He can barely force out a reply, and thanks God that Hamilton is there to cover the niceties as his world shrinks and twists around him.

And then Caleb is going after Abe, the light back in his eyes, and the look they share restarts the fire that’s been doused in his heart. He watches Caleb go, and then waits for Hamilton to leave before collapsing in nearest chair, burying his face in his hands and trying to catch his breath. It takes everything in him to stay in the room, to not follow after him. To not run out the door and grab the first horse he sees. To not fall to his knees before Caleb, somewhere in the woods, to beg for a place at his side.

His eyes are wet when the Sergeant knocks at the door again, but he grits his teeth and carries on. They will see each other again. There is no other option. They will win this war, and he will be with Caleb again.


End file.
